At the end of the 2023-2024 room selection process, many students were left without a room for the upcoming school year. Though all students were eventually assigned a residence hall, the issue didn’t end with room placement.
“[Residence Life] told me that if I didn’t find a roommate, I’d be placed at the bottom of the list,” said Kildahl Hall Resident Assistant Satoshi Simental Murakami ’26 in an interview with The Olaf Messenger. Murakami thought he could potentially get a single room, but was instead placed with an incoming first-year.
Murakami is not the only student to face this situation. “I didn’t have a roommate before room selection,” said Rachel Bays ’26 in an interview with The Olaf Messenger, “I was in Larson initially, [but] they didn’t move me somewhere until the middle of summer.” Over the summer, Bays, who is not a Resident Assistant, noticed that the Residence Life page said “to be housed,” to which she didn’t receive a follow-up on how this could be fixed. She was then moved to Kildahl Hall and notified that her roommate would be an incoming first-year as well.
Unexpected roommate changes were not the only housing issues to occur for Residence Life staff either. This year, Hoyme Hall Student Hall Coordinator Connor Bitterman ’24 was placed on a women’s floor. “It’s weird to live in this situation,” said Bitterman in an interview with The Olaf Messenger. “This could have been prevented.” All of these students expressed disappointment in St. Olaf Residence Life’s lack of communication and uncertainty.
In an interview with The Olaf Messenger, Associate Dean of Students for Residence Life Christopher L. Medley said, “If [Resident Assistants] choose not to select a roommate, it is understood that they may receive a roommate. Resident Assistants may room with a first-year student in a first-year focused residence hall because the priority is to house first-year students in these designated halls when at all possible.”
According to the new Assistant Director for Housing Operations, Evan Fisher-Damsgard, St. Olaf is at 98% capacity. This is the primary cause of students’ struggle to find housing. There were about 826 freshmen this year that needed to be housed. Medley mentioned that the women’s and men’s floors were filling up quickly during the housing process and this resulted in upperclassmen being paired with freshmen. This is the reason why a student such as Bitterman was placed on a women’s floor.
Many students are hoping that the next room draw will be a little less stressful. Medley ensured that Residence Life is working on creating a student-focused residential experience and bringing appropriate corrections to all housing situations for the remainder of the 2023-2024 academic year.
